Osler's Razor

As most of you know, I was critical of Brett Kavanaugh's performance at his confirmation hearings. It was a rough time for the nation.

It is important, though, to watch what happens next. And yesterday Justice Kavanaugh authored an opinion in Flowers v. Mississippi that was pretty good.

Curtis Flowers was prosecuted six times for the same crime, due to a series of prosecutorial misdeeds and mistrials. It was a capital case, so it was the defendant's life that was at stake as the sixth verdict (and death sentence) made its way to the Supreme Court. The issue was the prosecutor's exclusion of black jurors through jury selection. In over-ruling the Mississippi Supreme Court, Kavanaugh's majority opinion (only Thomas and Gorsuch dissented) identified the racist intent of the prosecutor and upheld standards against such racial bias.

The opinion is well-written and accessible: you can read the whole thing here.  Here is an intriguing part of Kavanaugh's analysis:

In this case, Carolyn Wright was a black prospective juror who said she was strongly in favor of the death penalty as a general matter. And she had a family member who was a prison security guard. Yet the State exercised a peremptory strike against Wright. The State said it struck Wright in part because she knew several defense witnesses and had worked at Wal-Mart where Flowers’ father also worked. Winona is a small town. Wright had some sort of connection to 34 people involved in Flowers’ case, both on the prosecution witness side and the defense witness side. See, 240 So. 3d, at 1126. But three white prospective jurors—Pamela Chesteen, Harold Waller, and Bobby Lester—also knew many individuals involved in the case. Chesteen knew 31 people, Waller knew 18 people, and Lester knew 27 people. See ibid. Yet as we explained above, the State did not ask Chesteen, Waller, and Lester individual follow-up questions about their connections to witnesses. That is a telling statistic. If the State were concerned about prospective jurors’ connections to witnesses in the case, the State presumably would have used individual questioning to ask those potential white jurors whether they could remain impartial despite their relationships. A “State’s failure to engage in any meaningful voir dire examination on a subject the State alleges it is concerned about is evidence suggesting that the explanation is a sham and a pretext for discrimination.” Miller-El II, 545 U. S., at 246 (internal quotation marks omitted). Both Carolyn Wright and Archie Flowers, who is the defendant’s father, had worked at the local Wal-Mart. But there was no evidence that they worked together or were close in any way. Importantly, the State did not ask individual follow-up questions to determine the nature of their relationship. And during group questioning, Wright said she did not know whether Flowers’ father still worked at Wal-Mart, which “supports an inference that Wright and Flowers did not have a close working relationship.” 240 So. 3d, at 1163 (King, J., dissenting). And white prospective jurors also had relationships with members of Flowers’ family. Indeed, white prospective juror Pamela Chesteen stated that she had provided service to Flowers’ family members at the bank and that she knew several members of the Flowers family. App. 83. Likewise, white prospective juror Bobby Lester worked at the same bank and also encountered Flowers’ family members. Id., at 86. Although Chesteen and Lester were questioned during group voir dire, the State did not ask Chesteen or Lester individual follow-up questions in order to explore the depth of their relationships with Flowers’ family. And instead of striking those jurors, the State accepted them for the jury. To be sure, both Chesteen and Lester were later struck by the defense. But the State’s acceptance of Chesteen and Lester necessarily informs our assessment of the State’s intent in striking similarly situated black prospective jurors such as Wright.